P.V. Narasimha breaks cyclical curse, enjoys political rebirth

The old man has broken the jinx. Consider the chakra of Indian politics that has sealed the fates of prime ministers and parties since the '70s. P.V. Narasimha Rao seems to have broken the cyclical curse and is enjoying a political rebirth in his mid-term.

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INDERJIT BADHWAR

December 31, 1993

ISSUE DATE: December 31, 1993

UPDATED: July 18, 2013 18:47 IST

P. V. Narasimha Rao

The old man has broken the jinx. Consider the chakra of Indian politics that has sealed the fates of prime ministers and parties since the '70s. On an average of every two-and-a-half years, the public readies its boot for a well-directed kick at elected governments.

Indira Gandhi soared to dizzying heights in 1971 but barely three years later the Jaya Prakash movement had taken the wind out of her sails. Two years after Morarji Desai triumphed with the Janata Party experiment, he just about withered away.

Indira Gandhi returned in a triumphant recovery in 1980, but by 1983 there was a palpable alienation against her and the pundits were predicting a debacle for her party that returned to power on a sympathy wave following her assassination.

The dizzyingly popular Rajiv of 1985 was but a shadow of his charismatic persona by 1987. And the self-crowned raja of social justice, V.P. Singh, made his exit in 1991 barely two years after trouncing the Congress(I).

And P.V. Narasimha Rao? After sort of having fizzled in two years ago with a majority thinner than his own hair, the man has begun to pop and crackle. He seems to have broken the cyclical curse and is enjoying a political rebirth in his mid-term. It doesn't matter that Mulayam Singh's confederates defeated the BJP in Uttar Pradesh.

It doesn't matter that Madhya Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh were delivered from the clutches of the BJP and the Congress(I) improved its standing in Rajasthan by an unexpectedly determined effort by regional chieftains who were not necessarily enamoured of Rao.

What matters is the upshot. The challengers within and outside his party have retreated. The BJP can no longer call for a mid-term general election. Barring some catastrophic event, Rao is suddenly the odds-on favourite to complete his term in office.

Environment Minister Kamal Nath, a known Arjun Singh supporter said in his inimitable way: "No doubt about it, he's the big boss again." A key Sharad Pawar aide admitted that "direct confrontation with the chief is not really possible now unless he bungles again".

And a CPI(M) MP from West Bengal noted: "We can no longer differentiate between the leader and the party, as we did during the no-confidence motion, and tell the Congress(I) to change its leader."

From within his own party he faces no immediate challenge. The Congress(I) Working Committee (CWC), with Arjun Singh and Sharad Pawar lying low and N.D. Tiwari humbled in Uttar Pradesh, will be firmly in Rao's hands with the two additional members he will nominate.

The chief ministers, including Madhya Pradesh's Digvijay Singh, pose no challenge to him. The PCC(I)s are creatures of Rao's personal political machine, and the AICC(I), in the absence of any party revolt, can hardly be expected to dethrone him.

Everybody loves a winner. And nothing succeeds like success. And as the pendulum swings to plus, the many minuses of yesterday, when Rao looked like a loser and a liability, seem to evanesce into the arithmetic of time.

But the calculus of yesteryear, no matter how brutal, was as real as the algebra of today's success. Ayodhya. Bombay. Debacles in southern by-elections. Bungling the religion and politics bill. The ditherer. Harshad Mehta's "bribe-taker".

As the Madhya Pradesh results poured in, the first signal that he emitted was that of a victor when he wasted no time in cutting down to size Rangarajan Kumaramangalam, a minister of state and an erstwhile confidant who had publicly berated the party high command for electoral setbacks.

This was a totally different Rao from the one who had appeared to be scraping and scrounging for help from his partymen and would-be defectors during the no-confidence motion and who had been pressing panic buttons each time southern MPs entertained Rao's northern rivals in the dinner diplomacy circuit following the Congress(I)'s setbacks in by-elections in the south and the break with Jayalalitha.

What more symbolic demonstration of everybody loving a winner than Jaya's smiling visit to Rao to try to refurbish their strained relations - a fact that has not been lost on the south.

Other rapid-fire decisions seemed to indicate a change not only in Rao's mood but also in his style. Lobbyists had pressed him hard to appoint as chief ministers, Sukh Ram in Himachal Pradesh, Harideo Joshi in Rajasthan and S.C. Shukla in Madhya Pradesh.

The Andhra Brahmin smiled. He told an aide: "Three more Brahmin chief ministers when the country is seeing a social transformation among backward castes?" He refused to interfere in Himachal Pradesh, refused to horse-trade in Rajasthan and, in a unique gesture, allowed a secret ballot to prevail in Madhya Pradesh.

In Uttar Pradesh, he was quick to grant unconditional support to Mulayam Singh in order to be identified as a force allied against the BJP as well as to gain administrative advantages from the ruling group.

Whatever became of the bumbler? For wasn't it the classic Procrastination Vacillation Narasimha Rao who was doing what he seemed to do best - bumbling - over Hazratbal and providing grist for the BJP's "biryani for bullets'' propaganda mill? But like the issue of the dismissed state governments, corruption and minority appeasement, Hazratbal, too, did not count for much in the elections.

Instead, after the negotiated resolution of the crisis, Rao came out looking like a hero not only in India but also in Washington D.C., which deflated the morale of Kashmiri militants. And Pakistan toned down its rhetoric.

Perhaps Rao's infinite patience and long-rope approach had worked this time, simply tiring out his adversaries.

As political adviser Jitendra Prasad says: "A cool attitude takes a long time to pay off but in the long run, it does. This was his attitude towards the elections, too." But the man remains essentially a political enigma.

For Rao really has no political team or even a body of political shock absorbers or advisers capable of selling his views and achievements to the public.

With Digvijay Singh: Rao stood to win no matter what happened in Madhya Pradesh

Indira Gandhi had a Deb Kant Barooah, a Lalit Narain Mishra, a P.N. Haksar, a Pranab Mukherjee, a D.P. Dhar. Rajiv had his ever-changing A-teams and B-teams.

In comparison, Rao is a loner depending on an assortment of faceless bureaucrats and durbari hangers-on like Sitaram Kesri, Rameshwar Thakur and Ghulam Nabi Azad.

All those who know him agree that before going into this election he had no grand design or master strategy. In fact Congressmen refused to use his posters during their campaigns and some even dreaded his visits to their constituencies. He could boast neither of solid vote banks nor of any ideological plan.

This may be difficult for psephologists to quantify, but he did have an indirect appeal - something that would not bring audiences out (perhaps his presence was even a drawback), but the feeling that there was an old man in Delhi who had taken care of Punjab and kept inflation down and was trying to do something about the economy.

In several polls, law and order and prices far outweighed confrontationist appeals such as Ayodhya. In the states where the Congress(I) improved its position, this subliminal appeal of law and order did perhaps matter. And Rao certainly preempted whatever appeal the Janata Dal may have had by announcing the implementation of the Mandal report.

Rao does have a core belief. His very being revolts against confrontationist politics as well as personal confrontation. And the very qualities for which he gained praise during his first few months in office - maturity, sobriety, scholarship, keeping the temperature down, not proceeding in haste - were perhaps the very attributes that came to be criticised in his dealings with the BJP.

And whenever he changed this stance, whether against his detractors in the party or against his political opponents, he was still not spared. His obsession is stability, something he feels is critical if India is to move forward on economic reforms which he now accepts as the only effective way of alleviating mass poverty.

But where he fails miserably is in making decisions. A senior colleague says: "Rao believes that a decision not to take a decision is in itself a decision. This may work sometimes but it can never work as a rationalisation for being indecisive.''

And it hurts the nation and the party when inefficient ministers are not sacked or cabinet portfolios remain unfilled.

The Prime Minister with China's premier, Li Peng: Rao's low-key, stable approach worked well in the reorientation of foreign policy

Given his cautious and diffident nature, if he's given the choice not to decide, he chooses not to. But very often, this is because by inclination he wants to fathom the very depth of an issue, and consult widely before deciding. He does not always have the time to do this and things just keep hanging.

This is also because, unlike Nehru or even the Gandhis, Rao is not driven by any great vision. Says a senior bureaucrat: "He is essentially a work-a-day man, detached, and rarely reacts in a choleric manner. Rarely flaps under pressure. He is not overawed by his office, but in his own way he believes in the destiny and ethos of India." In the face of crisis, say colleagues, his approach is never confrontationist.

His reactions are tactical. When he knows that a high stance won't work he strikes a posture aimed at reducing tensions and moving forward. Says Foreign Secretary Mani Dixit: "This really helps in bringing about a certain stability in the orientation of defence and foreign policies."

And this approach has paid its dividends in the widespread consensus on the radical reorientation of Indian policy in the post cold war era. The recognition of Israel, the South African initiative, the successful border thaw with China were issues that any opposition demagogue could have twisted to a political advantage.

But in this area, Rao's caution, his protracted consensus approach, consultations with the Opposition, Parliament's consultative committees and personal contacts with world leaders all paid off.

That's the thing about him. He hates unpleasantness. His severest admonition consists of, "What's all this, I say", or "Very disappointing, very disappointing".

His refusal to make a decision, say, to kick out a corrupt chief minister, an ineffectual PCC(I) chief, or a non-performing cabinet colleague is not just the result of his seeking a wide range of opinion but because he is naturally inclined towards avoiding unpleasantness.

He is often heard to remark: "Life is so full of nastiness. People should do what they must themselves. They should read signals."

The same deliberative attributes that served him well on foreign policy and took his economic reforms to a flying start failed him during his worst domestic crisis.

After Ayodhya, says an aide, "he was like a wounded animal. He was personally hurt to the point of distraction. He was in anguish, and a sense of guilt weighed him down. In public he blamed the BJP's perfidy, but privately he blamed himself for being naive to the point of stupidity".

History will not judge Rao leniently on Ayodhya and the communal divide that convulsed the country in savagery unknown since Partition. And only very privately will Rao admit that he should have acted earlier against the Kalyan Singh government. Not in forgiveness - but at least in fairness to the man - Rao was being Rao in dealing with the BJP family.

His supporters do not apologise for Rao's naivete. But they try and explain what was going on inside him. In a sense, Rao is an academic rather than a practical prime minister.

Notwithstanding his many years of exposure to government, he really believed in textbook legalities: that given a chance all institutions would function constitutionally and that other leaders would go by the book of ethics.

That RSS leader, Professor Rajendra Singh's personal promise of December 4, the BJP leaders' assurances to the court and Parliament would hold good.

He brushed aside intelligence reports and Arjun Singh's warnings about the threat to the masjid as Jonah's prognostications about the destruction of Nineveh.

The metaphors about the misfit in the ebb and tide of domestic politics flow fast and furious. Rip Van Winkle. A somnambulist who had failed to grasp the fall from innocence of his country. A dal and sambar Andhra Brahmin of the '50s when things were proper, when parties supported their prime ministers, when noblesse oblige and a sense of political chivalry prevailed.

In dealing with the BJP and his own party, Rao, it seems, was trying to return to the '50s. To rebuild institutions. It seemed strange indeed that this man who had been chief minister, home minister and foreign minister, refused to see that the politics of confrontation had replaced the politics of consensus.

That a lack of mutual respect and the refusal to give the benefit of doubt to an adversary were the order of the day. That the deinstitutionalisation of Indian politics that began after Nehru, had degenerated into personalisation under Indira Gandhi, and privatisation under Rajiv.

He sincerely believed that the BJP had to be trusted because, as he told friends: "The same electoral process that elected me has also elected Advani as Opposition leader and Kalyan Singh as Uttar Pradesh chief minister. We are all part of the same constitutional process."

But it was this institutional thinking that proved his undoing last December. He has been called soft on saffron. Rao's supporters do not deny this, but they have an explanation. Rao never did, and still does not believe in anti-BJP-ism as a credo.

He insists that moderate Hindus who do not subscribe to the RSS view often vote for BJP for reasons other than communalism and that forming a tough anti-BJP front would simply galvanise them towards the BJP and strengthen the communal divide.

He subscribes to the theory that bringing the BJP into the mainstream of Indian politics will have a sobering effect on the party. But with one difference.

He has promised to be ruthless on violations of constitutional norms and he showed his resolve in scuttling the BJP bandh in February, an act which many say was the beginning of the re-education of Rao.

It was this very philosophy rather than any prodding by cabinet colleagues that guided Rao's actions in arresting BJP leaders after the demolition and dismissing their state governments. These actions, which were then universally seen as giving more political mileage to the BJP, stand vindicated by this election. And that's what Rao really feels upbeat about.

The victory may be a mandate against the BJP and not a vote for Rao, but it was certainly a substantial vindication of the series of steps he took against the BJP for its violation of the rule of law.

And perhaps this new-found confidence will also manifest itself, his colleagues hope, in a new sense of security. They admit that his forcing the resignations of elected CWC members like Arjun Singh and Sharad Pawar was Rao's biggest blunder because it denigrated his image within the party as a man pretending to respect institutions while really hankering after personal power.

His critics denounced him as undemocratic, but his allies say that his antipathy towards Singh and Pawar was based not so much on his fear of their being able to dethrone him but from a personal sense of pique - that they did not play by the rules.

That after his election as chief they were never there to help him when he was in trouble but rather to force him to make mistakes and then criticise him.

To friends he repeatedly described this as a "new syndicatisation process that I will fight". And the antipathy extended to N.D. Tiwari as well because Rao simply refuses to buy the line that he deliberately ignored Uttar Pradesh and downgraded its leadership to safeguard his southern base.

His followers believe that the onus is on Tiwari and the Uttar Pradesh leaders who did nothing to revive the party in Uttar Pradesh and conveniently blamed Rao.

Rao is happy with the results of the elections but he remains worried at an intellectual level. He believes that "social justice" shouldn't become an excuse for backward casteism and that a concern for Muslim grievances should not become an endorsement of Muslim communalism. As a friend says: "Rao does not believe in ritualistic or fez-cap secularism."

But these are precisely his "institutional" concerns that seem so wishy-washy to voters in search of instant dynamism, flashiness and catchy slogans.

Even if indirectly, the recent elections have raised his stature. And between November 1994 and March 1995 Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Bihar, Orissa, and Maharashtra are to go to the polls.

For this he needs not only to instil discipline in the party but also to revamp its creaky structure starting with the cabinet and going right down to the PCC(I)s. "You will see greater emphasis on performance and accountability," says a top Rao aide. "And there will be greater political inputs goading him into making quicker decisions," says a confidant.

But even as Rao exults in his fortuitous revival there are minefields of problems ahead. "We are waiting for him to blunder again," says a key lieutenant of Arjun Singh.

Not withstanding his rekindling of inner-party democracy in some states after the elections, some of his former allies like the Shukla brothers in Madhya Pradesh and Parasram Maderna in Rajasthan are sulking.

And no matter what Rao's explanation about Uttar Pradesh, the state's Congressmen continue to make him the villain of their ignominious defeat. "Had anyone but Rao been prime minister, we would have been assured of the Muslim vote," says a senior UPCC(I) member.

Even Rao's decision to back the SP-BSP combine is seen by many Congressmen as damaging the party further because they believe that a strengthened BSP will fatten even more on the Congress(I)'s traditional vote bank.

But to allay their fears Rao has quietly set in motion what his aides call a "priority plan" to "get Uttar Pradesh moving again. You will see the results on the ground very soon," says a close adviser.

But there is still scepticism within the party. The decimation of the Congress(I) in Uttar Pradesh, the more uncharitable critics say, ensures that Rao will never have a challenger from there. Sceptics in other states say that Rao left the selection of leaders to the states because the arithmetic, as in Madhya Pradesh, simply worked against Rao's favourites and he had to bow to reality rather than face the immediate wrath of powerful state chieftains.

The test will lie in how he consolidates his victory

Rao had also promised in Tirupati that he would relinquish one of the two posts but has not done so. His two lieutenants, Sitaram Kesri and Beant Singh, also continue to hold twin posts in the government and the organisation whereas Digvijay Singh, a camp follower of Arjun Singh, is going to be forced to relinquish the post of Madhya Pradesh Congress(I) chief subsequent to his election as chief minister.

Apart from the immediate issue of the restoration of inner party discipline, Rao has also to shed his image of being biased. Show cause notices have been selectively sent to Y. Rajashekhar Reddy, a powerful MP of Andhra Pradesh, because of his opposition to Chief Minister Vijaya Bhaskara Reddy who is also chairman of the disciplinary committee of the party.

And S. Bangarappa, of course, faces the threat of action for his critical statement against Rao. Yet, powerful people like Bhajan Lal remain untouched despite their vituperative public criticism of Arjun Singh.

Kumaramangalam's outburst might have been ill-timed but it does reflect the sentiment of several Congressmen. It is true that Rao failed to dissuade party leaders from seeking tickets for their kith and kin. In Rajasthan alone, all the 27 relatives of state leaders, including the wife of Rajesh Pilot and the wards of Buta Singh and Nathu Ram Mirdha, lost.

On another front, the impending Joint Parliamentary Committee Report on the stock scam which indicts B. Shankaranand and many public sector undertakings has also recommended a deeper probe into the Goldstar company involving Rao's son, Prabhakar Rao. And this could provide a new launching pad for an anti-Rao missile as the 1994 elections approach.

Politics will be politics. And what Rao has received right now is a grand reprieve after the most bruising first innings that any politician has had to face. It's obvious that Rao has been most successful when he has functioned above politics - in foreign policy and in economic reforms.

And there is little doubt that as he looks forward to a full term at the Centre, he will stress these two issues above anything else. On the foreign policy agenda, the first priority will be some sort of breakthrough on Kashmir which is now internationalised like never before.

He will be banking on a meeting with Benazir Bhutto. Without going into details, his aides point to two objectives: emitting signals that there is a possibility of a compromise on the issue with Pakistan and making concrete proposals to convince the world that India is not on a high horse and welcomes rational international discussions.

The economy, even though some of the reforms have been stalled because of domestic tensions and the pressures of political scandals, is still something Rao can write home about. Despite initial setbacks, the country is coming out of its recession, exports are growing and the trade gap shows promises of narrowing.

Above all, inflation has been relatively curtailed to under the double digit figure, way down from the 14 per cent it soared to in 1991, and foreign exchange reserves have reached a record $7.4 billion compared to a mere $2.2 billion in 1991.

If Rao is to sell the fruits of his economic programme to the voters - and he is determined to make this the main electoral agenda - he has got to move faster on several fronts in the reprieve that he has earned.

As he has done, he must continue to back Manmohan Singh to reform the banking sector, to increase funds available for effective investments to create jobs.

And he has to move more decisively in the area of privatisation and use his political party to explain the benefits of rapid economic growth to the public.

Even if exit policies are a political no-man's land, there are other areas such as reforming the agricultural sector to remove ceilings for corporate farming, private investment in power and communications, and radio and television that can be explained to the public in terms of tangible benefits without attracting anti-poor opprobrium.

Nothing hurts investment more than uncertainty. And nothing hurts a leader in the public view more than dithering and indecision. Rao's born-again believers say the man is determined to overcome his shortcomings now that he has a fresh lease of political life.

In the absence of strength in Parliament, a weak party, the lowering of bureaucratic standards, and poor advisers, this may be difficult to achieve. But leadership also consists of overcoming defects through will-power and determination.

He who laughs, it is said, lasts. In the case of Rao we might add, he who pouts, routs. His is a small mid-term victory so far. His test will lie in its consolidation through reforming his party and government and bringing back bread-and-butter concerns to centre-stage by demonstrating the efficacy of economic reforms.

- with Zafar Agha and Yubaraj Ghimire

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